Litha

Litha means midsummer, taken from Liða, the name Bede recorded in the eighth century for the two Anglo-Saxon months around the summer solstice. Bede's Liða was a month name with no festival attached, and the word was adopted as the festival's name in 1974, when Aidan Kelly named the sabbats of the Wheel of the Year. It is pronounced LEE-tha.

Litha and Midsummer are two names for the same season, and near enough the same day. Litha is the pagan name, set on the astronomical solstice between June 20 and 22. Midsummer is the broader folk name, fixed on June 24 as Midsummer's Day and St. John's Day, with the bonfires of St. John's Eve the night before and the Scandinavian Midsommar kept the same week. A pagan household keeping Litha and a Swedish family raising the Midsommar pole are keeping the same sun.

Litha is a pagan holiday, one of the eight sabbats on the Wheel of the Year, kept by witches, Wiccans, Druids, and Heathens, and by many who never take a label. Wiccans who keep it often mark the Oak King's defeat by the Holly King, the story from Robert Graves that gives the solstice its turning point, while other pagans keep the day with fire and sun alone. The solstice itself belongs to everyone under the sky; Litha is the pagan way of keeping it.

Witches on the summer solstice keep the sun's day from end to end. Most rise for the sunrise, spend the day outdoors, cut herbs while the season holds them strongest, and light a fire at the late dusk, keeping a little of its ash for the year's workings. The solitary page gives the whole day in order for a witch keeping it alone.

The herbs associated with Litha are St. John's wort, mugwort, vervain, chamomile, lavender, and yarrow, the plants of the Midsummer harvest. The custom of cutting herbs on the eve, when their strength was held greatest, is one of the best-documented pieces of the season's folklore, and most of these plants flower at or near the solstice. Cut what the garden gives, hang it to dry, and the year's apothecary starts on the longest day.